EVs and CNG now 40% of car sales in India — is it time to stop buying petrol?

Alternative-fuel vehicles — electric, CNG and hybrids together — now account for around 40% of car sales in India, with EV demand rising as fuel prices stay high. That is a genuinely large shift from where the market was a few years ago.

Before reading it as "petrol is finished", it is worth separating the three, because they suit very different people:

- CNG makes sense on high running with a filling station you can actually reach. Boot space and the refill queue are the real trade-offs, not the technology. - EV works well if you can charge where you park. If you cannot, the running-cost advantage shrinks a lot, because public fast charging is far dearer than home charging. - Strong hybrids ask nothing of you infrastructure-wise and give most of the city fuel benefit, at a higher purchase price.

The honest summary is that the cheapest option still depends on your daily distance and where the car sleeps at night, not on which technology is growing fastest.

For anyone who has switched — did your actual running cost land where you expected? Service intervals and insurance are where people tend to be surprised, in both directions.